NATO foreign ministers agreed on Thursday 7 April to maintain and strengthen their support for Ukraine to prevail against Russia’s invasion, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced after their meeting in Brussels.
“The Allies have done a lot and they are determined to do more, now and in the medium and long term”, he promised the media. He added that ministers recognised the urgent need to provide military equipment.
Earlier in the day, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said his country needed NATO weapons “now” or “it would be too late”, calling for “weapons, weapons and weapons”, including aircraft, short-range missiles, armoured vehicles and heavy air defence systems. “The more weapons we receive and the faster they arrive in Ukraine, the more lives will be saved. More towns and villages will not be destroyed”, he said. He added that “as strange as it may seem, today, weapons are used for peace”.
Asked about the delivery of defensive as well as offensive weapons, and while the Czech Republic had announced that it was sending tanks to Ukraine, Mr Stoltenberg described the distinction between these two types of weapons as “strange”. He said that the Allies were supplying various types of weapons to Ukraine, which had a right to defend itself under the UN Charter.
According to the NATO Secretary General, we must work for a rapid end to the war, while recognising that we must be prepared for it to last “not just for weeks, but for months and even years”.
Beyond aid to Ukraine, the ministers discussed their future relations with Russia, hoping that NATO’s next strategic concept - to be adopted at the Madrid summit at the end of June - would provide an answer on how to deal with Moscow in the future.
In addition, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock announced that she had invited her allied counterparts to an informal meeting in Berlin in May to coordinate their response to the war in Ukraine.
Support for Tbilisi and Sarajevo
At their meeting, the Allies also agreed to strengthen their support to other regional partners, including Georgia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, in order to build resilience and strengthen their ability to defend themselves.
NATO proposes to increase its support through the substantial NATO-Georgia package, including in areas such as situational awareness, secure communications and cybernetics.
For Bosnia and Herzegovina, “we could develop a new defence capability package”, Mr Stoltenberg explained.
He said that any assistance would be “tailored, demand-driven and provided with the full consent of the countries concerned”.
Similarly, the Allies agreed to intensify cooperation with their partners in the Asia-Pacific region, including in the areas of cybernetics, new technologies, countering disinformation, maritime security, climate change and resilience.
Finally, the Ministers approved the charter of the ‘Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic’ (DIANA). (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)